Intravitreal injections are commonly used to deliver therapeutic agents to the eye, particularly to the vitreous humor of the eye for treatment of ophthalmic maladies such as age related macular degeneration (AMD), diabetic macular edema (DME), inflammation or the like. Intravitreal injections are often particularly desirable since they can provide enhanced bioavailability to a target location (e.g., the retina) of the eye relative to other delivery mechanisms such as topical delivery.
While generally providing a desirable form of drug delivery, intravitreal injections also have drawbacks and can present various different complications. Many therapeutic agents have difficulty penetrating target ocular tissue even after intravitreal injection. In some instances, the penetration difficulty can be caused by poor solubility or hydrophilicity of the therapeutic agent. In other instances, poor permeability due to size, molecular weight or other characteristics of the therapeutic agent can be the cause of poor penetration.
Intravitreal injections can also suffer from other drawbacks. As one example, intravitreal injections having therapeutic agent in the form of particles (e.g., suspended submicron particles or nanoparticles) can obstruct vision if the particles disperse in an undesirable manner. As another example, it can be difficult to consistently provide therapeutic agent close to a target location with an intravitreal injection since varying injection angles and variable eye size can cause significant variability in delivery location. As yet another example, intravitreal injections can result in delivery of undesirably high concentrations of therapeutic agent to a target location or elsewhere particularly when the therapeutic agent is relatively soluble.
In addition to the above, therapeutic agents delivered by intravitreal injections can lack duration of action since the agents can often rapidly disperse within the eye after injection. Such lack of duration is particularly undesirable since it can necessitate greater injection frequency.
In view of the above, it would be particularly desirable to provide an intravitreal injection that overcomes one or any combination of the above discussed drawbacks. As such, the present invention provides an ophthalmic composition, a system and a method that allow for a more desirable intravitreal injection.